Unfinished Reports
by D.K. Archer
Summary: A late night, paperwork, and our favorite roosterhead. SanoSaitou yaoi


Unfinished Reports  
  
D.K. Archer  
  
Disclaimer: Do you really think I own anything? I can wish like hell, but..  
  
Warnings and notes and stuff: This fic contains Sanosuke/Saitou slash, or yaoi, or whatever the heck you want to call it. This is my first attempt with the fandom, pairing, or anything resembling a sex scene, so please tell me how you think I've done. There may or may not be a sequel. Finally, this was written thanks to the constant needling of my gal, Claire. Love ya, poppet. ^_~  
  
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Saitou dragged the nib of his pen down the page to spell out lines of text in glistening ink. The light of the paper lantern argued with the embers of his cigarette; it was almost too dark for this. He must have looked some morbid ghost sitting at the writing desk in this light, just shadows in the yellowed diffusion; a scarred, pallid phantom in European wool trousers.  
  
Saitou paused a moment to scissor his cigarette and drag it away from his mouth, trailing a life line of grey smoke to the darkened ceiling. Ashes fell to his trouser leg and he absently brushed them off with the back of his hand.  
  
Something shifted. Saitou froze as his ears picked out the sounds of skin against cloth, and a soft disruption in the breath that kept consistent sound-track with the night. The body sprawled on his futon kicked futilely at the coverings as it slept.  
  
Hn.Ahou.  
  
Saitou wedged the cigarette back between his lips and glared at the half filled paper before him, as though it really were anything more than fiber and wet streaks of ink. The lines were drying into matte patterns on the page.  
  
So he added another.  
  
Theft reports. Robbery. An arson at a tea house. There were at least three hours left before dawn and Saitou Hajime had nearly caught up on his paper work. Saitou was NEVER caught up on his paperwork; he didn't think there was an officer in Japan who was. For all he knew he might bring on the apocalypse if he ever finished that last report.  
  
Though it was probably too late for that. If the apocalypse was going to be triggered by anything he did he had already done it, as attested to by the idiot who was now snoring softly in the darkness, his head fallen onto the floor. Saitou paused and snubbed his cigarette out in the dish. He shouldn't need it just to finish a handful of reports.  
  
The idiot rolled again and choked on his own snores. He heard fabric move.  
  
"What are you doing?" Sano slurred blearily. Saitou did not turn to look at him.  
  
"Paperwork."  
  
The boy snorted at the curt reply. "At night? Even you aren't that obsessive." Fabric rustled behind him. He heard the pad of feet over the bare boards, languor making Sanosuke even louder than usual. He was still warm from the blankets. Saitou felt the heat of him long before the boy's palms slipped artlessly up his shoulder blades and across his collar, diving down his chest like pearl hunters. The chair remained a very real obstruction between them. "Don't tell me you still can't sleep." He purred into the policeman's ear. His breath was as warm as the rest of him; Saitou felt like he was being held by sunbeams. He shrugged off the boy's grip violently, clacking Sano's teeth together in his head.  
  
Sano stumbled back. "Hey! What's your problem, old man!"  
  
"Don't touch me." Saitou said coolly. The pen skritched over the paper again to form another line. He wasn't sure what he wrote.  
  
Sano was being suspiciously silent.  
  
"Who do you think I am, jackass!?"  
  
Ah, there we go.  
  
"Goddamit, Saitou, turn around and look at me!" The boy shoved him roughly at the shoulder, almost splattering the page if Saitou hadn't the foresight to hold the pen carefully away. He set it down slowly alongside the report (infuriatingly parallel, in fact) and turned in his seat to face the fuming ahou.  
  
The break in his motion was unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't well learned in Saitou's body language. To Sano it looked clean, and the fact Saitou had actually turned around was somehow more irritating than if he had stayed staring resolutely at his paper. His eyes looked flat, two pebbles stuck in his head that showed no spark at all. Sano, on the other hand, looked quite alive. He hadn't bothered to put on his trousers; he faced Saitou against the darkness in a fighting stance, fists tightened near his sides and legs anchored to the ground. The diffused candle light was unbearably kind to him. It smoothed the scars and edges of his ragged muscles, fading sharp lines into soft shadows and mysterious corners. His face was pulled back sharply but Saitou could see his lips were still red against his teeth.  
  
He hadn't lit a lantern before. He knew those planes by touch, not by sight.  
  
That these observations affected Saitou at all was unseen. He regarded the boy with the dull, uncaring patience reserved for those he had to play nice to, but didn't have to like. Everything about the look made the viewer acutely aware he was wasting his time.  
  
"Well what is it?" Saitou asked flatly.  
  
Sano growled "What is this, you're just going to fuck me and that's it? You go on your way and I go on mine??" Saitou didn't bother replying; the boy was obviously onto a rant. "Fuck that, Saitou! I don't know what you think I am, but I'm not some cheap whore you can buy with a jug of sake and kick me off the bed when you're done!"  
  
"Of course not." He answered calmly. "I was planning on waiting until morning."  
  
That earned him a blow to the side of the head he didn't bother to block. Unlike the last time he had fought the idiot, this one actually hurt, but not nearly enough to faze him. He opened a drawer of his desk and fished another rolled cigarette from his box. He needed one after all.  
  
"What were you really expecting, ahou?" he said as he struck a match. The sulfur flared and gave battle to the candle light, casting twisted shadows on his face. "You think just because I'm not some garish stranger that this means anything? I met you in a tavern." He touched the flame to the cigarette tip, pulling the stick with his breath until the tobacco caught, and delivered a puff of smoke into his mouth. He waved the match out. "You were already well on your way through one jug of sake. Bad sake, I might add." He dropped the spent match on the ask tray. "YOU came to ME and started a conversation, hoping to get a few drinks out of me before I got bored of your insipid babble. You stayed long enough to get drunk and you followed me home." He paused to pull a breath of smoke, and let it out in a long jet towards Sano's face. "I'm not an expert in these matters, but I do believe that constitutes a cheap whore I can buy with a jug of sake."  
  
Sano's teeth seemed to stretch around his head as the snarl broke open like an egg; it was an amazing illusion.  
  
"Bastard, you think you're getting out of it that easy?! I'm not just some fuck toy, and you're hardly the sort to go about of dragging men home for a little recreational sex! This isn't exactly a 'swinging bachelor pad', you know!" He threw his hands in a broad gesture, encompassing the vacant walls, the blank futon twisted up and cat cornered with a half spilt (and hard to locate) bottle of oil. Trays of ash had found their ways onto the flat surfaces of the room. Sano did have a point; this was not the home of someone who made a habit of this.  
  
Saitou did not concede it. He instead flicked the end of his cigarette, sending stars of ash falling to the boards. "And? What's the alternative?" A cruel smirk found its way to his face, but his eyes remained blank as pebbles. "Do you think I've been harboring some secret love for you all this time, and saw your drunken state as a chance to act on it? Please. Even you can't be that stupid."  
  
He was a little surprised to see Sano flinch. "I'm not an idiot, I know damn good and well that you don't care about anything but your own purposes and that 'Aku Soku Zan'." He mimicked the voice pattern admirably.  
  
"Then what are you so angry about?"  
  
Sano faltered. Saitou kept going.  
  
"Unless, of course, YOU are harboring some desperate, unrequited love for me and got drunk enough to think a quick convenient fuck means more than it did." The sharp teeth at the corners of his mouth shone.  
  
Sano blinked. "No fucking way! Who in their right mind would want a perverted old fossil like you anyway, cockroach!?"  
  
There was something, a tiny slip, like the look Tokio had given him when he'd woken from a nightmare and nearly cut her throat. But it was passing, and too quick to be sure of.  
  
Saitou smoked. "Then there's the door. I trust you can show yourself out."  
  
It seemed Sano had intended to grab his shirt collar, but as he was not wearing a shirt, those scrabbling fingers settled for his throat instead. They trembled just short of clawing into his tendons. Far too calmly, Saitou brought the cigarette through his arms and breathed in, brightening the red tip mere inches from Sano's snarling teeth.  
  
He blew the smoke at his eyes.  
  
Sano tightened. "Jackass, I ought to-"  
  
"To what? Strangle me? Please." His eyelids drooped with amusement. "If you really think you can kill me then by all means, try."  
  
Like a soap bubble, the fury seemed to inflate behind Sano's face, causing his hands to tighten around the policeman's neck, thumbs digging into the vein and artery. Saitou felt his own pulse through the obstruction.  
  
For a moment it looked like the idiot was really going to try to strangle him. He didn't particularly want to beat some sense into him, but if he persisted. Sano suddenly blinked, his eyes slowly widening as the contortions of his face went slack. His hold loosened.  
  
Despite the sudden deflation of his fury, Sano did not remove his hands; he stared back at Saitou with a startled look, like he'd seen rabbits fly. His hands were warm. Too damned warm.  
  
The same could be said for his mouth.  
  
It wasn't often that anyone surprised the Wolf of Mibu, but it took all his control not to jerk back into his desk when Sano kissed him. He stared past the mess of Sano's hair in surprise, his cigarette dropping ashes by his ear. The boy still tasted like sake and sex.  
  
The wolf didn't move a muscle. Sano pulled back and studied his face, as artfully blank as it was, and smirked. He'd apparently seen something he was looking for. But when he moved in for another try Saitou braced a palm against his chest, blocking him.  
  
"What are you doing, ahou?" he said coldly.  
  
Sano didn't answer. His fingers ghosted slowly down Saitou's arm, over skin and scars, and caught the offending hand from behind. Saitou blinked at this gesture. The touch on his neck curled softly around and ventured upward, into the shallow, sensitive hairs, then higher, dusting his skull and infuriating in its insubstantiality. This time, when Sano pushed forward to breathe so closely over Saitou's lips, he didn't have the sense to push back.  
  
The boy had trapped his hand against his chest, and he could feel the faint rhythm of his heart through his palm, like a captive moth. Sano's open lips touched the points of his, so softly, and despite himself Saitou opened his own and breathed the boy's breaths, his cigarette forgotten for now. Sano's eyes had dropped to lucid slits under his hair. His tongue trustingly graced the edges of Saitou's teeth; pushed them open with a nearly imperceptible nudge. But he moved no further than that. He hovered, breathing the man, touching so barely with his heart moving patterns beneath his palm. Saitou waited.  
  
Sano's eyes closed and he sighed quietly between them. It was an unbearable proximity; Saitou took the sigh and shifted, closing the space, unconsciously letting himself be the one to break. Sano backed away only moments after their lips touched, and smirked.  
  
"Some quick, convenient fuck, old man." He mocked.  
  
Sano felt the captured hand curl to a claw too late to stop himself from being shoved. He lost his balance and fell gracelessly on his rump.  
  
Saitou Hajime towered above him, the cool, imposing, frozen Wolf of Mibu. He'd knocked the chair to the side as he stood. Sano momentarily wondered how many men had seen their last sight staring up at Saitou's frozen countenance.  
  
"Get out."  
  
"Hey, what's your problem?!" Sano shouted. He'd landed on his tailbone.  
  
"My problem is a pesky little ahou who thinks far too much of himself and has overstayed his welcome." He said coldly, dropping his cigarette to burn in the tray. "Get out."  
  
It was entirely possible Sano didn't realize how vulnerable he was, sprawled like that on the boards with only shadows clothing his body. Saitou stood between him and the lamp, leaving the boy in a pool of darkness on the floor.  
  
"Why don't you just admit it!" Sano snapped, his teeth bared. "Admit the great Saitou Hajime's as much a lonely old bastard as he looks. You didn't bring me here just because I was the first piece of ass you stumbled on!"  
  
Saitou narrowed his eyes. "I didn't bring you here at all. You followed me, ahou."  
  
"Like you complained!"  
  
He took two steps to stand beside the boys hips and stared down at him a moment, cold and insect like, before dropping silently to a kneel. The fingertips of his right hand hovered over Sano's chest. "Then you think I brought you here for your company?" he said, in dangerous tones, as his touch dragged lightly down Sano's abdomen. "You're a child, Sanosuke. You're stupid, brash, loud and incompetent. What would I want with you?"  
  
The boy had closed his eyes, and smirked.  
  
"You didn't call me ahou."  
  
Saitou paused. "What?"  
  
"You called me Sanosuke." He looked at Saitou through half closed lids, amused, and more than a little smug. "You didn't call me ahou."  
  
Saitou snorted. "Ahou."  
  
That got him a lazy smile. Sano shifted his weight from an elbow and snaked around the policeman's neck, dragging him down to kiss softly, almost chastely. Saitou resisted only for a moment, but as his mind clicked to a decision his shoulders relaxed, his eyelids dropped to amber slits and his palm flattened warm and rough against the skin of Sano's belly. The details of the room slowly faded, one by one, as Sano dropped from his other arm and dragged Saitou with him towards the floor, not letting him pull back and reconsider his actions. Tendons, muscle cords, vertebra, anything at all Sano hadn't been allowed to touch the first time he sought out with slow, clumsy movements. Saitou's hand slipped down into the coarse hair between Sano's legs and caught his sleeping sex in his fingers.  
  
Sano's mouth twitched. His hold slacked enough for the policeman to pull back a little, to watch Sano's mouth pull tight against his teeth and his brows crush together as Saitou worked him. There never seemed to be much difference in how a man looked if he were gutting him or pleasuring him. He'd done more than his share of both in his life, and found the similarities amazing.  
  
Sano's hands had tightened to fists against the floor, his breath coming harsh and hissed through his teeth. He looked like he was in pain. It was an obvious show of his age that so soon Sano's breath caught and his face twisted like a man in his death throes. Saitou kept a hold of him while he shuddered, until his back settled against the boards, and his face relaxed, with a childish whimper.  
  
"Hmph. Doesn't take much." Saitou said with a straight face, snatching Sano's jacket from where it had been discarded earlier and cleaning his hand on it. Sano didn't notice. He panted and put an arm over his eyes. "Shut up, old man." But there wasn't much sting to it.  
  
Saitou tossed the jacket somewhere into the dark and stood, looking for the cigarettes so he could finish that report while the ahou slept again. A hand snatched the leg of his trousers before he got very far.  
  
"Where do you think you're going?" Sano asked, looking surprisingly lucid, considering how quickly he had fallen asleep the last time. Saitou raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
"I have work to finish."  
  
"Yeah, I'd say you do." Sano smirked. "So where are you going then?"  
  
Saitou rolled his eyes. "Idiot. Get back on the futon and go to sleep."  
  
"Hey, come on, old man, you aren't so far gone you can't handle it twice in one night, are you?"  
  
He didn't rise to the taunt. He delivered Sanosuke a cool, deathly look and kicked his hand away. "Either go to sleep or get out, it's your decision." He said, snatching another cigarette from the desk and lifting the shade from the lantern to light it, causing havoc with the shadows in the room. Sano was still sitting on the floor blinking at the rejection.  
  
Ignoring him, Saitou settled back in his chair, with the cigarette in his lips, and dipped the pen in the inkwell.  
  
He couldn't think of anything to write.  
  
He scrawled out the next line anyway, and the next, and eventually he heard the boy pick himself up from the floor and slump to the crooked futon, grumbling to himself. He was snoring again in a matter of minutes.  
  
Saitou sighed into the soft light; the report made no sense now. He crumpled it and pushed it from the desk.  
  
Let him be behind. 


End file.
